Rachel, fallen from the sky.

The paths of the small cemetery in Ledeberg, east of Ghent, are entirely covered with slightly wild grass. The graves seem scattered at random over this green carpet. You have to wander about to find Rachel’s grave, discreetly decorated with flowers. The photo placed on the marble reveals a chubby, smiling face.

Three minutes away, as the soul flies, rises a large building of glass and concrete. One of the two lifts has been out of order for a long time. The flat where Rachel lived is cramped; a worn imitation-leather sofa faces an imposing flat screen, tuned to a Ghanaian channel. The television is broadcasting the funeral of the international Christian Atsu, a football star found dead under the rubble after the earthquake in Turkey.

But it is another death that brings us here. Three years after Rachel’s tragic death, her parents remember the last moments of their younger daughter.

That Friday, Rachel is not feeling well. Alerted by her parents, the local medical centre considers that the child is not ill enough to be seen. One has to put this back in context: in March 2020, GPs had been instructed not to see their patients, for fear that the Sars-Cov2 virus would spread.
The little girl feels better over the weekend, but in the night from Sunday to Monday, her father finds her at 4 in the morning on the sofa, sweating. She is feverish but not coughing. He thinks she should eat a little first before taking any medicine. She swallows a yoghurt, then a 1-gram paracetamol tablet, a dose meant for adults.
Rachel then shares a bowl of tea with her mother and falls asleep in the same bed. Around 7 in the morning, the little girl is feverish and short of breath.
The medical practice, contacted urgently, offers an appointment at 10:00, but the little girl’s condition deteriorates rapidly. The father decides to call an ambulance. He speaks only English, and the 101 operator does not understand him. The father gets agitated and articulates as clearly as possible: “My kid very sick!”. Helpless, he gets no help and turns to a neighbour a few floors up who has a car. The little girl is limp. The father notices that her heart has stopped beating, but he hopes for a miracle. He carries his daughter to the car. Rachel’s lifeless body is taken to UZ Gent, Ghent University Hospital, where attempts are made to resuscitate her, in vain.

Rachel’s mother remembers: “We broke the sad news to Rachel’s sisters and to people close to the family, then informed the school. Dozens of people came to visit us to express their sympathy. We had a lot of support. From the next day on, nobody came any more”.

And for good reason. The next day, UZ Gent communicated its diagnosis: Rachel died of Covid-19. The news spread terror in a Belgium obsessed, to the point of hysteria, with the spread of the virus. Rachel’s father, for his part, does not believe it. No other member of the family had the slightest symptom, either before or after Rachel’s death. The mother, who shared her bed with her daughter and drank from the same glass, was not affected at all. In the building where dozens of families are crammed together, there was not a single case of Covid during the first wave, according to the family.

The hospital’s post-mortem diagnosis is a godsend for the health authorities. At a press conference, with a tremor in his voice, the spokesman for the fight against the coronavirus announces the death of a 12-year-old child as a result of Covid-19. “It is a rare event, but one that upsets us deeply”. Before making this announcement, did Emmanuel André, a doctor by training, make sure that no other cause could explain the death? Did he rule out an allergy, a reaction to paracetamol? Did he even read the hospital’s report? Rachel’s family, in the confusion that followed their daughter’s passing, lost this document, which could have shed light on the matter.

Four months later, the death of another little girl, aged 3, was also attributed to the coronavirus by the health authorities, immediately relayed by the press, which made headlines of it, despite the denial of the child’s father. She had been born with a degenerative disease and was living her last days at the Cliniques Universitaires St Luc when she tested positive. Why carry out a PCR test on a child at the end of her life?

Two little victims, heroines in spite of themselves of a TV series written under the sign of fear. The scriptwriters were no doubt already working on the last episode, the happy ending: the vaccination of children.

In the small flat in Ghent, the memory of little Rachel is everywhere. Her smile is displayed alongside the portraits of her sisters. Her inconsolable mother keeps the last images of her younger daughter on her phone. Deeply religious, hands and eyes turned to the sky, her father has come to terms with his grief: “I have entrusted her to God”.

Bernard Crutzen, film director.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BAM!

Photo Bernard Crutzen